Page 133 of At First Flight
“It was you,” I say. “You make everything feel like that.”
Her smile is soft. “I don’t need a big wedding. Or a fancy plan. I just want what we already have.”
I lace my fingers through hers. “We’ve got a lifetime to build it, any way we want.”
She leans her head against my shoulder. We sit like that for a long while, the porch creaking gently under our weight, the stars blinking above us. The warmth of her pressed against my side is better than any blanket. The quiet peace of knowing she’s mine now? That’s the stuff no amount of money or legacy could buy.
“I used to think happy endings were only in books,” she whispers.
“This doesn’t feel like an ending,” I say. “More like chapter one.”
She laughs quietly. “Yeah. The real beginning.”
Inside the house, one of Evelyn’s drawings flutters slightly in the breeze from an open window. It’s a crooked heart with all our names scrawled inside it. I catch sight of it and smile.
We sit in silence, but it’s the kind that says everything. We found a way through the grief, through the ache. While what we made is not perfect, it’s ours. Something worth holding on to.
Holding her hand beneath the fading twilight, I think back to that first flight when everything in my life was about boardrooms and bank accounts. I never thought family would be the thing that gave me purpose and not numbers or power. But then she sat across from me, and everything changed. Turns out, love didn’t clip my wings. It gave me a reason to land.
THE END
